[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is out!]

With a barrage of Photoshop sneak peeks plus many for other CS6 products, you knew that finally Adobe Illustrator was bound to get more love of its own… Adobe has now slipped out two cool looks at the new Illustrator CS6.

Similar to Photoshop, it’s been two years now since a major new version was released – and similar to Photoshop CS6, the new edition of Illustrator will also have a redesigned user interface that is both darker and more modern. The idea here is by making the background darker and the controls more streamlined, the content itself will more readily shine through and stand out.

Here below AI Product Manager Brenda Sutherland shares two quick peeks into a bit of what’s new for Illustrator CS6 as part of the upcoming Creative Suite 6 – a terrific new Gradients on Strokes feature that lets you create artwork that looks complex but is easy to edit, plus an exciting new way to create seamless, repeating vector patterns… check them out:

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Adobe has just put out an excellent resource updated for CS5 / CS5.5 – a free printing guide in the form of a 140-page downloadable e-book. Earlier versions of this have been out for previous releases (see the older CS4 and CS3 links below), but now this is fully refreshed and upgraded for the latest versions of the products.

This very handy tome will tell you everything you ever need or wanted to know about getting great print results with your projects in Photoshop CS5 (including Extended), Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5/CS5.5, and Acrobat X Pro. All the different tools, setups, settings, options, functions, and formats – what they mean and how to best use them to achieve your goals.

Adobe describes it as, “learn the best ways of handling and preparing CS5 and CS5.5 files for print with this in-depth technical reference, designed especially for printers and production artists” – but anybody who would like a tutorial on how to print and generate the most optimal output from their designs can gain something here…

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The fine folks over at Que Publishing, who have over thirty years of experience writing good books about software and technology, have put out a free sampler edition of their new series of books on learning Adobe Creative Suite 5… This “CS5 on Demand” e-book runs 172 pages (11.3 MB to download, in PDF format) and includes five full chapters on Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, and Flash Professional.

This collection has been designed to teach CS5 through step-by-step tutorials with easy-to-follow instructions, to be rich in illustrations for those who want to learn visually, and to be complete and in-depth references for those seeking a trusted desk resource to quickly provide the answers you need.

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Nicely complementing the new HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities recently added to Dreamweaver CS5, Adobe today announced the availability of the Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack. This free add-on provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3, extends Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) capability in Illustrator CS5, and helps you easily design web and device content to take advantage of the latest advancements in these technologies.

Back about six months ago (before CS5 was released), there was a lot of buzz surrounding sneak-peek videos about multiscreen authoring with HTML5 and CSS3, plus a new “Smart Paste” capability between Illustrator and Dreamweaver. These features are now becoming realized with some pretty cool tools to create and place inter­active vector-based content in live web pages across multiple devices and screen sizes, without the use of Flash or Silverlight. All that’s needed is HTML5 canvas support along with JavaScript.

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Over the next six weeks Adobe is launching a new series of in-depth online seminars to learn the best and get the most out of some top CS5 products, including InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Flash Professional…

The presentations are 90-minute live “deep dives” with Adobe product experts where you can get firsthand detailed information on the new features of these releases, see demonstrations, and get direct answers to your questions. All sessions are from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM ET on upcoming Tuesdays, and will be presented in English:

Deep Dive: Adobe Illustrator CS5
Tuesday, July 13, 11:30am – 1:00pm US/Eastern
Complimentary Registration

Deep Dive: Adobe InDesign CS5
Tuesday, July 27, 11:30am – 1:00pm US/Eastern
Complimentary Registration

Deep Dive: Adobe Flash Professional CS5
Tuesday, August 10, 11:30am – 1:00pm US/Eastern
Complimentary Registration

Deep Dive: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Tuesday, August 24, 11:30am – 1:00pm US/Eastern
Complimentary Registration

Read more…

Yes, CS5 is out! It looks like a phenomenal release, and we have full coverage – including new products, pricing, configurations, system reqs, videos, “what’s new” feature lists, and more:

• Creative Suite 5 Product Overview  
• CS5 Full Product Configuration Matrix
• CS5 Complete System Requirements
• CS5 Pricing for Commercial and Education
• What’s New in Photoshop CS5  
• What’s New in Dreamweaver CS5  
• What’s New in Illustrator CS5  
• What’s New in InDesign CS5  
• What’s New in Flash Pro CS5  
• All About New Flash Catalyst CS5  
• What’s New in Contribute CS5
• What’s New in Premiere Pro CS5  
• What’s New in After Effects CS5  

ALL CS5 products are immediately available for purchase and instant download, with free shipping on all Adobe orders over €500/£350 in Europe and the U.K. (no coupon or promo code is required)…

On Adobe’s site: If you’re considering upgrading from your current software, here’s a helpful upgrade guide. Also new is an excellent FAQ covering purchasing policies and key product changes… The online documentation for all CS5 products also just went up.

Lastly and importantly, the CS5 free trial downloads and Student and Teacher Editions
(up to 80% off) are also now available!

[UPDATE (May 13th) – Adobe CS5 is now shipping and downloadable in 16 languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Korean.]

[UPDATE (May 21st) – More details on the new support in Dreamweaver CS5 for HTML5 here.]

Over the past three days Adobe has quietly released several “preview” videos of future technology in Dreamweaver… Now just as with the sneak-peek Photoshop videos posted last week, there are no assurances on exactly which version of Dreamweaver or when – but considering that CS5 could be coming out fairly soon, we could be seeing some of these new technologies in CS5. But even if not, they are rather impressive…

The first video below covers a very cool new “Smart Paste” command that makes it a snap to bring vector designs (such as artwork from Illustrator) directly into HTML – as simple as copy and paste.

The second one delves into support for multiscreen authoring with HTML5 and CSS3, and so might be considered more in the “emerging” department… This one is a big challenge for designers especially as varied mobile devices become increasingly more prevalent on the web.

The last video comes from the new “CSbuzz” hub site that launched last week, and is a little tease on significant improvements when working in Dreamweaver with dynamic material such as PHP, which historically hasn’t been as handy.

For best viewing, click the expand icon after pressing play on each thumbnail for full-screen HD: